BENGAL TIGER

The Bengal Tiger

The Bengal tiger is the most numerous tiger subspecies — and in many ways, the most hopeful. With 3,680 individuals in the wild, it represents the bulk of the world's remaining tigers. India alone hosts about 70% of all wild tigers. And thanks to decades of intensive conservation, the Bengal tiger population has actually increased by about 40% since 2015.

But 'recovering' doesn't mean 'recovered.' Bengal tigers are still killed for their bones, skins, and claws. Their habitat — the jungles and mangroves of South Asia — is under constant pressure from agriculture, development, and human settlement. And as human populations grow, tiger-human conflict intensifies.

The Sundarbans, the world's largest mangrove forest straddling India and Bangladesh, is one of the last strongholds of the Bengal tiger — and one of the most threatened. Rising sea levels and intensifying cyclones, linked to climate change, are drowning the tigers' habitat. The tiger population in the Sundarbans has already declined sharply, and some scientists fear the entire ecosystem could be underwater by the end of the century.